May 14, 1771: Industrial Utopian Robert Owen Born

1771: Robert Owen is born in Newtown, Montgomeryshire, in North Wales. The capitalist and social reformer will gain influence as a proponent of the humane treatment of industrial workers, a critic of unrestricted child labor, a co-founder of labor’s cooperative movement and the founder of several utopian communities.

The son of a saddler and ironmonger, Owen was apprenticed to drapers in Lincolnshire and London, starting at age 9. He later moved to Manchester, the epicenter of the Industrial Revolution in England. There, he formed a partnership with a mechanic to open a factory that made cotton-spinning machinery.

Rather than just making something, Owen was making the machines that made something. And he was making money.

At age 19, Owen was the employer of 500 people. He imported the first bales of Sea Island cotton from the United States to England and improved the quality of the spun cotton.

He and his partners set up the Charlton Twist Co. in 1794. They purchased the New Lanark mills in Scotland from David Dale in 1799. Owen married Dale’s daughter the same year.

Dismayed by the living conditions of the company’s employees, Owen quickly established a model village for them, with up-to-date sanitation. He also instituted sickness and old-age insurance funds.

Although Owen continued the common practice of employing child laborers, he created schools for them — about a century ahead of his time. New Lanark became famous throughout industrialized Europe.

But Owen’s business partners didn’t like having their profits siphoned off for the good of their workers, and they broke off with him. Owen found new partners in Quaker William Allen and utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham.

Owen propounded his theories of utopian socialism in an 1813 book, A New View of Society, or Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character. Owen desired to bring people the benefits of the Industrial Revolution while avoiding the worst of its evils.

Humanity’s shortcomings on both the personal and societal level, Owen believed, could be overcome by subjecting people to the proper influences and environment, starting at birth. Only then would competitive society make way for cooperative society.

Owen drafted a bill for “industrial emancipation” in 1815. It would have prohibited employing children less than 10 years old, and set a maximum 10½-hour day for those 10 to 18, He was greatly discouraged when Parliament finally enacted a watered-down reform with a 9-year-old limit and 12-hour day in 1819.

Owen testified before the House of Commons Committee on the Poor Law that the increasing automation of industrial production robbed working people of their jobs. He believed that villages of 1,200 people should be set up on 1,200-acre (2 square-mile) plots devoted to a mix of agricultural and industrial production. This, he reasoned, would reduce poverty, and he urged individuals, churches, counties and the national government to form such settlements.

Owen set up some of his own. In 1825, he bought the town of New Harmony, Indiana, from the German immigrant Rappite religious sect and established a utopian community there. Or tried to.

Although New Harmony prospered at first, the farmers, laborers and professionals soon fell to quarreling about politics and religion. The utopian colony failed in 1828. Owen lost 80 percent of his investment of 50,000 pounds sterling (the equivalent of a $5.3-million loss today).

Owen returned to Britain and quit the New Lanark enterprise over disagreements with fellow shareholders. He financed Owenite communities in Orbiston, Scotland; Ralahine, Ireland; and Queenwood in Hampshire, England. The first two lasted only a few years, but the third had a six-year run from 1839 to 1845, gaining considerable fame.

Owen set to work establishing — and aiding the establishment of — cooperative societies for mutual trading: essentially stores owned by their customer-members. He also set up co-op factories and markets for their products. Following the creation of the London Equitable Labor Exchange in 1832, similar organizations sprang up in other cities.

The system bogged down when benefits for the worker-members exceeded profits. Prices at the co-ops rose, and people bought from the competition. But worker- and consumer-owned co-ops still exist on a smaller scale in Great Britain, throughout Europe and indeed around the world.

When Owen retired from active leadership of the cooperative movement in 1834, the Owenite Trade Union had a million members.

Owen lectured and wrote on his social, educational and philosophical theories, penning Book of the New Moral World, Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race and The Life of Robert Owen Written by Himself.

Despite the anti-religious tone of much of his earlier written work, Owen became involved in the Spiritualist movement in 1853. He died Nov. 17, 1858, age 87.

Source: Various

Image: Robert Owen’s plan for New Harmony, Indiana, exemplifies his concept of the ideal community.Wikipedia

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